Amazon, Walmart headline tech hiring in 2018

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Dive Brief

Amazon and Walmart are leading the tech world in hiring at the midway point of 2018, according to a report by IEEE Spectrum, a magazine from the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers.

In April, Amazon announced the addition of 3,000 cloud computing and machine learning engineers at its expanded facility in Vancouver, Canada. The e-commerce giant also said it planned to grow its Dublin, Ireland, Amazon Web Services offices by adding 1,000 software and development engineers, according to IEEE Spectrum; Walmart will add 2,000 new tech workers to its Walmart Labs unit.

Other tech players, however, are downsizing. HP will cut 5,000 jobs between 2018-2019 across a range of categories, while Tesla will cut 3,000 salaried employees (but manufacturing staff will reportedly not be among the losses), IEEE Spectrum reported. At IBM’s Watson Health Division, 50% to 70% of the staff who joined IBM through acquisitions were laid off this past May.

Dive Insight:

Despite the struggle to find qualified candidates, there’s still a boom in tech hiring with e-commerce giants leading the charge. Although some say the dearth of qualified candidates has caused growth in tech to hit a wall, AI is also poised to expand head count with its huge demand for engineers.

Most believe tech, particularly AI, will will create more jobs than it eliminates, but demand will make the competition fierce. The tight labor market could give recruiters an opportunity to turn to tech, and their own learning and developement partners, to upskill existing employees with tech capabilities, rather than look externally.

The labor market of tomorrow will depend heavily on the technology that’s changing the way we live and work. Businesses looking to hire are taking a creative approach to the marketplace — expanding their reach and working with tech partners to train existing staff and potential hires.